


Under the Moon

by Tousled_Sky



Series: Land of Enchantment [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Imprisonment, Memories, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: "We'll always be together, because we're both under the moon."





	Under the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> “I’ll forever love you, even if you’re doomed; we’ll always be together, cause we’re both under the moon” –Insane Clown Posse, Under the Moon  
> (Yes I used to listen to ICP, I read Homestuck and I loved Gamzee, what do you expect)  
> Another addition to Land of Enchantment; still keeping with the celestial theme for the titles. Fitting, since this is Star Trek fanfiction.   
> Leave me a comment, loves~

Three hundred years ago, Khan saw the sun for the first time.

He was ten years old, and had never even been outside before, and seeing the white blaze far above him was something striking. He had gazed up into the sky, both awed and fearful, his eyes watering in the light of something of infinite power and beauty.

Feeling the sunlight on his face for the first time, Khan fell in love with the life before him.

But that was a different life. And nearly a year ago, Khan had stepped outside beneath a sun that didn’t warm him, but numbed him instead. The sunlight in the grey city was cold and white like the lights of the cell he’d spent the first ten years of his life in, and heralded the despair he felt for the next ten months, in a cell of a very different kind.

It wasn’t only the sun that was different now; the whole planet seemed to be. Khan was no stranger to starting over, but leaving the labs had been stepping from the cold into warmth, and this new Earth had none of the warmth of the one he had traveled with Juana and Ethan. Then, he had been free. Now, he was as trapped as he’d been as a helpless child, and the world before him was bitter and cold and a terrible thing to know; a ghostly parody of the world he once been part of.

Khan’s memories of his adolescent life were vastly preferable to his new, frightening surroundings. Oftentimes, he would lose himself in his own mind, thinking back to his time on a wild, beautiful Earth with his free and happy family. How exhilarating the salty winds had felt as he jumped into the ocean from the high sea cliffs of Oregon, his face wet from the spray as the winds whipped his damp hair back. Or just how endless the world had seemed when he looked over it from high up in the mountains of Colorado, the world sprawling and breathtaking before him.

However, his favorite moment to think back to happened in a motel in Montana. He’d been sitting on the roof with Ethan and Juana, the moon rising over rocky peaks of the mountains that surrounded them. Green forests, dark in the night, crawled up the sides of the mountains and stretched out from their bases. Fireflies blinked below them, flitting about in the fields behind the motel. The moonlight was bright and white, and yet nothing like the lights of his cell; unlike the harsh florescent lights of the lab, the light of the moon was soft, and it illuminated not a cage, but a wide, wide world.

Sitting on the rough shingles, looking out at the moon rising over the mountains, Juana had put her arms around both Khan and Ethan and addressed them both in her soft, warm voice. _“My mother always loved the moon. The night she died, the moon was bigger, brighter, and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it before or since, and I know it was her way of telling me she was finally at peace. Whenever I look to the moon now, I feel closer to her; like she’s somehow here with me.”_

_“I think she probably is.”_ Ethan had said. _“Maybe even though she’s in heaven, she watches over you from the stars.”_

_“I’m certain of that.”_ Juana had answered. _“She loved me just as I love you two. And just like her, I’ll always be with you in spirit, mi hijos, even when we can’t be together in body. Never forget that.”_ Juana spoke as she gazed up to the skies, the moon reflected in her dark irises.

_“Even when we’re apart, we’ll be together when you’re under the moon.”_  

Looking to the moon from the windows of the lab where he worked on Marcus’s weapons, Khan would remember his mother’s words and feel closer to her. It reminded him that somewhere inside himself, he was still that kid in Montana, wearing his big brother’s faded Led Zeppelin hoodie with his mom’s arm draped over him.

That was the only solace he found from this new, unfamiliar planet that had once been his home; the moon was unchanged, and it always made him feel a little less lonely when he stood in its pale light. Even as terrible as it was to be without his family, he could still be with them when he was under the moon.

But here on the Enterprise, flying at warp speed through space, there’s no moonlight. Only the cold florescent light of the ship, and surrounding them, the light of unfamiliar galaxies, full of unfamiliar stars. He was far, far away from the sky full of constellations that Juana had taught him, made up of the stars that she had told him their ancestors watched over them from. He was a long ways from the moon he’d watched rise with Juana all those years ago.

He was almost as far from the moon as he was from the person he’d back into that Montana motel.

A universe of difference.

And even with his sleeping family aboard the ship with him, Khan’s never felt more alone.


End file.
